


Still Here

by Nevanna



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-04
Updated: 2015-01-04
Packaged: 2018-03-05 05:56:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3108584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nevanna/pseuds/Nevanna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tish saw the world end, and almost nobody else remembered it happening.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Still Here

**Author's Note:**

> **Content warning:** References to the type of torture, death, and devastation that took place during the episodes "The Sound of Drums" and "The Last of the Time Lords."
> 
> This was written in response to the "dystopia" prompt (my wild card) for Hurt/Comfort Bingo 2014.

Tish’s hands were still callused from the work she had done during the year that never was, and she had two new scars that weren’t visible when she buttoned her blouses to the collar. It wouldn’t be difficult to get any of those things smoothed away, but she put off ringing to make the appointments.

She knew exactly what half the buildings in London looked like as burned and empty husks. She looked at her friends, at the man who interviewed her for a new job, at the woman who bought her a drink on Saturday night (when she’d already probably had too much), and wondered where each of them had ended up in the other world. Had they been killed in the first attack? Separated from their families? Enslaved in the shipyards? Tortured? 

The first time that Leo (her baby brother, who had survived for four months in hiding before soldiers caught up with him) came over for dinner, she hugged him so hard that he staggered backward. Even that didn’t surprise him as much as the sight of Mum and Dad holding hands. “Right, then, what’d I miss?” he demanded.

After an evening of strained smiles and changes of subject whenever Leo tried to bring up the assassination of Harold Saxon, Martha finally took him aside. He was convinced that all four of them were playing a joke on him, and when they insisted that they weren’t, he stormed out of the house.

(His death in the other world hadn’t been quick, and the Master had turned on the monitors and made his family _watch_.)

“I think that sooner or later, last year will start to feel like a story that you’ve read, or a film that you’ve seen,” Martha said a week later. They were stopping for a quick coffee before she had to dash to the hospital. 

“Is that what you want to do?” Tish asked. She could barely imagine what her little sister had seen and done as she traveled what was left of the world, fighting for her life, for all their lives. There were parts of that story, she was already certain, that she’d never really know.

Martha looked like she was considering a lot of different answers to that question, but all she said was, “Sometimes I think it’s what we all need to do, if we’re going to move on. But stories, they can take their own kind of hold on us.”

“You’d know, I guess.” Tish drained her coffee cup. “Just so you know, I’m really glad you’re back.”

While they waited for the traffic to stop so that they could cross the street, a newsagent on the corner caught Tish’s eye. Three different magazines were still discussing Saxon’s assassination, and his face was on each of the covers. Tish still saw that face in her nightmares sometimes, and heard his gleeful laughter or the hiss in his voice when he commanded her to call him “Master.”

Martha had seen them, too. She lifted her chin and stared straight ahead. Without a word, Tish put an arm around her sister’s shoulders, and they walked on.


End file.
